07/26/2010
By Seth Mydans
New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — For 30 years since the brutal Khmer Rouge regime was driven from power, Cambodians have lived with unresolved trauma, with skulls and bones from some killing fields still lying in the open and with parents hiding the pain of their past from their children.
Monday, Cambodia took a significant step toward addressing its harsh past with the first conviction of a major Khmer Rouge figure in connection with the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.
But some survivors were distraught over what they saw as a lenient sentence, one that could allow the defendant — Kaing Guek Eav, 67, the commandant of the central Khmer Rouge prison and torture house — to possibly walk free one day, despite being convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for overseeing the torture and killing of more than 14,000 people.
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